January 2026 Newsletter
Tales that feed the soul
A monthly letter from Joanne. January 2026.
Opening ritual: Pull up a chair, dear friend. Pour yourself tea. Light a candle if you have one. This is your sanctuary time. A few moments carved from the rush of the world to tend your inner landscape
In the old tradition, when a storyteller began, the listeners would settle their bodies and quiet their minds. They knew that stories need space to work their medicine. So take a breath. Let your shoulders drop. You are here now. The story is waiting.
THIS MOON’S TALE – A small story to begin with, about holding what matters gently, and in our own time.
“The Woman Who Kept the Keys”
There was once a woman who lived in a house with a hundred doors. Some were painted red, some blue, some the colour of old gold. Some were tiny, fit only for mice. Some were so tall they disappeared into the clouds.
The woman carried a ring of keys, and every morning she walked through her house, locking doors.
“Why do you lock them?” visitors would ask.
“Don’t you want to see what’s behind them?”
“Oh, I know what’s behind them,” the woman would say, her voice quiet and sure.
“That’s exactly why I lock them.”
Behind one door lived her rage, a great red dragon breathing fire. Behind another was her grief, a vast, shoreless ocean. Behind another her joy, a wild horse that had never been broken. And behind the final door, high in the attic, was her desire, a garden where thorns and roses grew in equal measure.
“Aren’t you afraid?” the visitors asked.
“Every day,” she said.
“But I’ve learned that fear is just another door. And I keep its key too.”
One day, a young woman came to visit. She watched the key woman make her rounds, listened to the click-click-click of locks turning.
“This seems like a sad way to live,” the young woman said.
“All these parts of yourself locked away.”
The key woman smiled.
“You misunderstand. I’m not locking them away. I’m keeping them safe. I’m being the guardian of my own wildness, my own sorrow, my own fire.”
She lifted the ring of keys. They caught the light. Each one different, each one worn smooth by years of use.
“These keys mean I can open the doors whenever I choose. When the time is right.
When I’m ready. When the world can hold what’s inside.”
She pressed one key into the young woman’s hand.
“This one is yours now. To a door in your own house. You know the one.”
The young woman felt the weight of it in her palm.
She did know. The door she feared, the door she had pretended didn’t exist.
“What if I open it and can’t close it again?” she whispered.
The key woman met her gaze.
“Then you’ll learn that sometimes the opening is the closing. Sometimes letting something out makes room for something new. But the choice is always yours. You hold the key.”
Soul Reflection
This story invites a quiet pause. It asks us to consider:
What doors have you locked in your inner house?
What parts of yourself have you decided are too dangerous, too inconvenient, too much?
And then, a deeper wondering:
Are you someone who locks the doors and loses the keys, or someone who locks them and keeps them close, knowing they can be opened when the moment feels right? There is a difference. One is forgetting. The other is choice.
Journal prompts:
• Which “door” in my inner house am I most hesitant to open?
• What might it feel like to be the keeper of my own keys?
• Is there a part of myself I’m ready to let breathe a little more freely?
THE SANCTUARY CORNER
What I’m reading on Beginnings & Belonging:
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
A quiet, reflective novel about the lives we imagine, the choices we grieve, and the possibility of beginning again — even when we feel lost.
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
A tender, restrained story about moral courage, belonging, and what it means to step gently into a truer version of yourself.
• The Offing by Benjamin Myers
Set on the edge of a new life, this novel explores unexpected connection, kindness, and the way belonging can arrive where we least expect it.
Until next time, be gentle with what you carry, and trust yourself with it.
With warmth,
Joanne.
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